Right wing Sino-phobic pessimism struggling to create a self-fulfilling prophecy:
"The Energy Dept. says that world growth in petroleum has averaged 1.5% a year since 1995, despite China's growth." [latest issue of Business Week]
Dr. Gal Luft is founder and co-director of the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security (IAGS). He is a former lieutenant colonel in the Israel Defense Forces. etc. etc. etc.
Gulick writes:
Having briefly looked at the piece by the esteemed Dr. Luft which Jonathan Lassen sent out over the wire, I'll say this much: Luft epitomizes the classic good cop/bad cop US foreign policy disposition toward the PRC, where the realist Kissingerians and the neo-cons are archly fused into one. Sounding the yellow peril alarm is not an end-in-itself, but both an end and a means to leverage the PRC in a geo-economic marriage of convenience with the US, to prolong the US' dying hegemony. On the one hand, the health of US finance capital hinges on the health of increasingly neo-liberal accumulation in the PRC, which in turn hinges on China overcoming its myriad raw material input bottlenecks, namely its primary energy bottleneck. On the other hand, the US at all costs must curb the development of an autonomous PRC powerhouse. So says Luft, we'll transfer renewable energy technology at a bargain basement rate, you stop cutting independent petroleum production and sourcing deals with Persian Gulf and Central Asian states. If you don't conform, we'll sound the yellow peril alarm, this time framed in politically timely terms of proliferating arms to Middle Eastern bad guys.
But heightening big power (dare I say inter-imperialist when one of the principals is the PRC) rivalry over primary energy reservoirs _is_ a real deal grounded in geological facticity, not a scare story dreamed up by spooks and right-wing think-tank demagogues. The PRC really turned the corner into full-blown Rostowian take-off last year, what with 30 percent increase in oil consumption, and the private automobile fleet growing by leaps and bounds. Chinese ecological socialism sooner or barbarism later, my friends.
John Gulick
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